Autograph manuscript by Melchior Hoffmann discovered

Julia Neumann

Monday, March 16, 2015

The following has reached us from Julia Neumann, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin:

An autograph manuscript by Bach contemporary Melchior Hoffmann has recently been identified at the Berlin State Library as a result of work being carried out by KoFIM (Music Research and Information Competence Centre), a DFG project. This anonymous manuscript, previously attributed to Leopold Hofmann, is a short mass (Missa brevis) in C major and originally had the shelfmark Mus.ms.anon. 747 in the Department of Music. At the beginning of the 1960s, the manuscript was apparently mistakenly thought to be by Leopold Hofmann, a Viennese contemporary of Mozart, but one cannot rule out that even then the name might have been confused with Melchior Hoffmann. In any case, the shelfmark was changed to Mus.ms.autogr. Hofmann, L. 1 M and the manuscript was shelved appropriately.

After many decades, and after comparing handwriting, the manuscript can now be identified as an autograph manuscript by Melchior Hoffmann. At the same time, we can now be certain that the mass was indeed penned by Melchior Hoffmann, as until now it was considered to be a doubtful work.

The description of the source and the digitized version of it are now in the RISM online catalog (RISM ID no. 464131272); additional links in the record lead to scale images of the watermarks that were made with a newly-developed method using thermography. A short report about correcting the attribution is in the most recent Bach-Jahrbuch (Julia Neumann, “Ein unbekanntes Kompositionsautograph von Melchior Hoffmann in der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin,” Bach-Jahrbuch no. 100 (2014): 213 – 219).

Category: Rediscovered